Wow! Nothing gets to me quite as much as hearing that a Progressive is just a Liberal with a new hair style. Come on! Read some American political and social history, folks. Progressives turn the tide or die trying. Liberals flow with the tide and write checks to Progressives.
….Let me expand.
First, I recognize that definitions of terms can shift radically over time. It just happens that when the term “progressive” comes up it is used so loosely that it doesn’t mean much at all. At one time it meant something quite specific.
The Progressives of 100 plus years ago—despite their ethical flaws and inconsistencies; traits shared by Liberals and all humans, by the way—stood up against tremendous forces by the 1% that were crushing the 99%. And with their skills and determination they affected change.
When a politician today identifies as a Progressive or Progressive Democrat, I hold the person up to that standard: Will this person stand up and effectively resist big banks, big investment, big insurance, big oil, big retail, big gaming and all the other forces that work against my interests? (I might include big religion in that group.) If I think they will, I’ll accept that person as a Progressive.
The Progressive I’ve read most about is Louis Brandeis. We benefited from his influence for a long time; at least up until we dismantled the Glass-Steagall act in the late 1990’s. Brandeis distrusted bigness of all kinds because with bigness came less and less accountability. His book, “Other People’s Money,” written about 1912, was republished and read by many in the 1930s. Policy makers close to FDR dismissed Brandeis’s objections to bigness as old-fashioned; yet he did help to inspire Glass-Steagall bank regulation and other signifant legislation reaching back to Teddy Roosevelt’s time.
A very good book on LDB’s contribution is Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People (Harvard University Press, 1984) by Philippa Strum. Also, American reformers, 1870-1920 : progressives in word and deed, edited by Steven L. Piott.
More or less relevant to the shift from Progressivism to Liberalism , I’ve read: Madam Secretary, Frances Perkins by George Martin; and The defining moment : FDR’s hundred days and the triumph of hope by Jonathan Alter.
I’m no expert; just someone with an over-the-top interest in politics and democracy like most of the people on this list. I appreciate the great responses people have written to this topic.
n/t
Just enough to disagree with it.
Liberal once meant free markets, for example. When I first heard the term progressive in modern politics (as opposed to early 20th century) I saw it as less ideological than liberal, but now that seems to have reversed.
Progressive Era progressives were a non-partisan hodgepodge of good government, ethical business oriented Republicans like TR and more radical labor activists like Robert LaFollette and Upton Sinclair. Bobby was an isolationist when it came to foreign policy though, and Sinclair later became a true red socialist and Roosevelt Democrat. Some progressives, like Margaret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson, were big believers in ‘scientific’ racism who had a strong aversion to racial and religious minorities and immigrants, not to mention electoral democracy. Classical liberals, aka bourbon Democrats, ceased to be a force in our party after 1924, when we nominated Davis the last of em.
Al Smith, FDR, Truman, Stevenson, and Kennedy were proud liberals and decidedly to the ‘left’ on labor questions, internationalism, and race relations than their ‘progressive era’ predecessors. I would take a true blue mid century liberal over most of what passes for ‘progressive’ these days. It’s become an amorphous term.
Al From, and the Clintons have used it as a moniker for their brand of third way DLC centrism. The DLC’s think tank is called the Progressive Policy Institute for instance, partly because it was poll tested as sounding more ‘forward looking’ than the dreaded ‘L word’. But the Center for American Progress is definitely left of center, and defines progressivism as something fairly close to mid century liberalism, albeit a bit more realist/dovish than they were on foreign policy questions.
The New Democrat Network is the ‘progressive’ centrist caucus aligned with PPI/DLC, while the Congressional Progressive Caucus is more aligned with CAP and left of center economics. Both are socially liberal, the socially conservative dems are the Blue Dogs and there are about 19 of them left in the Congress. Obama has carefully vacillated between both wings, he was a member of both the NDN and the CPC in the Senate for instance. Cory ‘quit private equity’ Booker is a self-described progressive and a member of both groups, and I would hardly call him a liberal on economic questions.
To me, and I will admit to using them interchangeably, liberal is the stronger term since it aligns itself to that midcentury liberalism that has long been discredited by the press and both parties and desperately needs to be revived. That’s the fighting faith of Ted Kennedy that Elizabeth Warren is reviving. You won’t see progressives in coal country, you might see them bemoaning populism in the New York times editorial page while Warren and Grimes fire up the UMW crowds. You might see progressives affix the marriage equality banner to their facebook page while ‘liking’ Michelle Rhea and bemoaning teacher tenure in the same breadth (Whoppi Goldberg is a prime example of this kind of progressive).
If defeating the religious right and winning the culture war is your priority, you’re a progressive, if defeating Wall Street and rebuilding the middle class is your priority, you’re a liberal. And if, like most of us, you want to win both fights, you’re both, and a good Democrat to boot. The OP may have inverted her terms, but to me, liberalism was always worker focused and worker powered while the progressive movement in either form or party was happily ensconed in the middle class.
I’m a Brendan Conway liberal, he voted for FDR, Truman, Stevenson, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, Mondale and Dukakis and he never quite trusted slick Willy before he passed. I think had he lived to see the flag he fought for used as a shield for the illegal war in Iraq, he’d have been backing Dean like I did. And i don’t recall Dean getting smeared as a progressive.
and became the energy behind the Democratic Party’s resurgence post-Bush, too many of the wishy-washy sort started using describing themselves as progressives.
It came to the point where now many of the people who described themselves as part of the progressive movement in, say, 2006, now happily describe themselves as liberal — because we don’t want to be associated with those wishy-washy types.
2014 is a great example of that; Seth Moulton, for example, described himself as a centrist and toyed with running as an independent two years ago. Seeing that he’d get no where in a primary like that, he’s now rebranded himself as a “progressive,” but like most wishy-washy types, I doubt would ever use the word liberal.
There was a lot of movement building that happened before Obama by a new progressive movement…. but a lot of that got usurped by the party, making it look a lot more like a party building effort.
I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad thing — just something we should be aware of. TR’s progressive movement was long ago dead and buried, while the burgeoning progressive movement of the mid to late 2000s was taken in a political m&a by the 2008 Obama campaign.
The Progressive Party of Vermont captures that original spirit, but outside of that I think the term has been obscured beyond meaning. The purpose and intent of the OP escapes me.
“Progressive” has become an umbrella term that seems to cover a whole host of people committed to getting very little done. You’ve got centrists who mostly want to maintain the status quo that call themselves progressive because it makes it sound like they might actually have an idea or two. You’ve got you bad-in-a-foxhole Dems too scared to call themselves liberal who have ducked under the progressive umbrella. You’ve got your coffee shop progressives, who somehow manage to get themselves so twisted they wind up being against classic liberal stances – schools, housing, jobs, infrastructure.
I’m camped firmly on the left and I’ve got a fundamental distrust of self-described progressives. Me, I’m liberal.
However, I felt that “progressive” acquired a special meaning in the 00’s. It sort of seemed to be what supporters of Howard Dean were. Liberalism before that often seemed to be fragmented into a bunch of separate concerns.
And I agree it briefly took on a certain meaning in that time, Democrats or disaffected voters brought back to the Democrats by opposition to the war and hope for that candidacy. I think the Emmanuel’s and Clinton’s reclaimed it so it lost a lot of meaning.
When asked if she was a liberal, Hillary said “I prefer the term progressive”, and that sorta says it there.
Hillary is calling herself a progressive now? That’s it for that one. I don’t think it’s much help going back to “liberal,” though. When I hear that word, I think of Joe Lieberman.
If we have to have a label, it’s time for a new one. The ones I can think of, that emphasize the interests of human beings instead of corporations and institutions, all seem to have overtones of ’60s unrealistic idealism. Did any compelling and appropriate turns of phrase appear during the Occupy Movement?
…I suspect mostly means she’s still afraid about what the word liberal has become.
But the use of the word “liberal” in American politics was itself a euphemism used to avoid a “scary” politically charged word–“socialist.”
In Europe, “liberal” means “laissez-faire” and is a synonym of “libertarian.” In the US, “classic liberalism” describes advocacy of welfare-state policies (like the New Deal) that are elsewhere more honestly thought of as “socialist.”
So if HRC is ducking something by avoiding the label, she is doing nothing that St. FDR didn’t also do.
…and liberals usually don’t go nearly as far as true socialists.
What is a true socialist and how far would she go that liberals would not? In Europe, democratic socialism is a thing that exists– hence the Social Democrats, and they pretty much advocate what American liberals do.
…a liberal will look for a variety of ways to universalize health care, a progressive would advocate strongly for single payer like Medicare or a the Canadian system, a socialist would have the government take over the operation entirely a la Britain’s NHS.
IMHO. Particularly with the kinds of centrists calling themselves progressive these days.
I would argue that’s basically where I am. I’d be voting NDP in Canada, SDP in Germany, and Labour in Britain and Ireland for example. But that term has fallen out of favor these days on our side of the pond. It’s what the Old Left was, but the New Left insisted on being more radical and the FDR liberals didn’t want to look too pink and started avoiding the term outside of academia. But MLK, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Bernie Sanders are self described social democrats. Not bad company to keep in my book.
historic and cultural differences between people who would describe themselves as part of the “progressive movement” compared to “liberals,” the fact that you appear to think all liberals do is write checks to progressives leads me to believe you aren’t aware of those differences.
Furthermore, today’s progressive movement is very different from the progressives of Woodrow Wilson’s days, and the lines are being blurred between the today’s progressive movement and those who would describe themselves “liberal” every day, as the word liberal is being reclaimed.
a progressive because the word “liberal” was and, and in more conservative communities, can still be a negative word. For a while, “liberal” connoted “wimpy.” For me, a Progressive was a liberal with a good uppercut.
In a radical context, liberals are concerned citizens who want to rock the boat but not throw anyone out of the bridge. They believe in incremental change rather than revolution.
Now, I don’t care what I call myself. I’m a Democrat. After that, I advocate certain points of view and policy. I am what I do and what I say, not what I call myself.
… believes in Richard Nixons’ definition of the word ‘liberal’. That’s about it.
I would counsel you to do the same.
Somewhere along the line, “liberal” == “marxist” became the accepted definition along the entire spectrum and even those who would, absent the John Birch Society, identify with a liberal worldview shy away from the word for its connotations, and flee to the relatively anodyne (or, at least linguistically, baggage free) term ‘progressive”…
This is not entirely the fault of the fascists on the right (adept, as they are, at turning language to their ends) but also the claim of many an american marxist who were actively trying to consume the entirety of the left and the entirety of liberalism into their sphere. So between the right saying “all liberals are commies” and the marxist saying “you betcha”… can you blame anyone for dropping the term? I don’t. For all the bitter implacability of their mutual hatred radical marxists and the fascist right often work hand in glove… eerily so, sometimes… Or, as a conservative friend of former days used to say, “sometimes you go so far right, you come left…”
I also know that creating divisions between “progressive” and “liberal” is productive only for those who would choose neither label…
He opened China, established OSHA and the EPA, and was making progress toward universal health care. If only he had realized he didn’t have to bug the DNC to win so handily in 1972…
He was on board that. Granted, a lot of these programs were due to his own attempts to hobble a Nixon-Democrat coalition to stay in power, rather than from core beliefs, but, on domestic issues, he was quite liberal, and in some regards, his foreign policy was rather realist and dovish (vis a vis the Mideast, USSR, and China-Southeast Asia was a glaring exception to this fact).
Nixon also help set the wheels in motion to get us into the mono agriculture of corn and the associated environmental and health problems.
It single handedly has done more to destroy the American worker than any other policy decision since then.
America would still be the world’s factory were it not for Nixon.
I get the hyperbole of your response. I hope that’s that was intended.
Richard Nixon did not make China the most populous nation on earth. The overwhelming majority of working-class jobs were lost by the AMERICAN decision to invest the lion’s share of our GDP in technology to replace workers with technology wherever possible as soon as possible. Richard Nixon did not make that decision.
Richard Nixon belatedly acknowledged what the rest of world had already accepted for decades — the EXISTENCE of the world’s most populous nation and a nuclear-armed Asian superpower.
America would be a laughing-stock had Mr. Nixon not opened China.
Just saying that it wasn’t a liberal one, or made for liberal reasons.
And, yes, technology has cost lots of jobs, but it is NOT the biggest reason why we don’t have a huge industrial sector in this country. Germany has gazillions of factor workers and incredibly technology — there’s no reason why we couldn’t have been Germany, other than the fact that shipping jobs to China was profitable for our corporations and we, the people, did little to stop that. (Unlike Germany, which has protected their manufacturing sector.)
Germany has also automated and chosen to continue to invest in worker training and highly skilled labor. We already stopped investing in that starting in the late 60s when vocational programs started to get cut, ‘right to work’ killed urban manufacturing unions, meat packers, and the like, and more and more factories relocated to exurbs where they were fewer unions. Easing restrictions on immigration and yes, easing trade protections and tariffs, also contributed. But saying “it’s Nixons fault for opening China” is a simplistic analysis that discounts other contributing trends.
We are all in the same page, protectionism mixed with higher unionization and actual investments in our infrastructure, industrial policy, and high skilled export oriented economy is the way to get out of this rut. It’s slowly starting to happen since fuel costs are making shipping prohibitive.
Germany also has a policy of having a member of the labor union sitting on the board of directors, a belief in co-determination or Mitbestimmung. Labor is respected and allowed a voice at the table. My guess is that with Germans, there is a bond between the skilled craftsman and the street sweeper, a bond that does not exist in the USA. I do not have any friends in Germany but I do have friends in France and Denmark. Their view of labor is far more respectful than our view in the USA>
Here in the USA, the labor class has allowed itself to be split in two: the middle class and the poor. Simply put, the middle class is the class of laborers who can support themselves through their labor and the poor are laborers who cannot. The poor are simply lazy or otherwise immoral and they need to work harder, find better jobs, make better decisions and join the middle class. The middle class is somewhat more moral and industrious, but not as moral or industrious as they ought to be. If they were, they’d be rich. As John Steinbeck wrote, “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
(Please Note: I am no fan of socialism or capitalism as stand alone systems)
The right has successfully convinced the middle class that taxes on the middle class are being unfairly transferred to the poor who are undeserving. The right has convinced the middle class laborer that his job is possible through the good graces of the rich. This explains the successful campaigns of Scott Brown and the probable success of Charlie Baker where middle class labor votes to cut programs in education, cut health care spending, and encourage casinos as a “best option”.
I’m not a fan of all the trade favors we do for China either, but previously we were still recognizing only Taiwan. Personally I think we should recognize both. I think having at least a diplomatic relationship with any country with which we are not actively is by definition liberal.
I’d love to blame Nixon and China, but the deindustrialization of the heartland was already starting. As Tom suggested, automation is a bigger culprit, particularly in the auto industry, as has been the availability of cheap labor either via insourcing plants to ‘right to work’ states, which devastated industrial unionization in the Midwest, or importing significantly cheap labor from Mexico. The Stockyards are a great example of an industry Chicago lost, in the late 60s/early 70s, as did Milwaukee, to plants in Nebraska and Texas that hired Mexican laborers. US Steel exiting South Chicago and Gary, IN left a permanent hole in those communities that has yet to be filled. And a lot of that is due to outside factors, dumping from low cost European competitors as well as Asian, and also newer steel that is cheaper to make.
NAFTA was a bigger culprit for outsourcing, in terms of losing plants and jobs to Mexico.
30 years ago, China was nothing, and American manufacturing jobs were lost to competition from Japan.
But I am only 25, but have spent most of those 25 years studying history. And yes the Japan scare was a lot scarier than China, even pop culture references it in Blade Runner and Rising Sun for instance.
that was directed to the notion that opening diplomatic relations with China destroyed the American worker.
Japan was just the scapegoat of the times, as Mexico and China have been.
Try watching the Michael Keaton vehicle Gung Ho sometime. Sheesh.
Ma loved him in those comedies, Mr. Mom was another.
Oh and I was with you that Nixon going to China didn’t affect the American worker as much as Rye contended.
was even better after I had kids, especially the diaper-after-beans scene
Was a lefty in name only, and I think a lot of the New Left/Old Left/Old Liberal split was for those reasons during the height of the Vietnam War. A lot of neocons call themselves ‘Scoop Jackson Democrats’, but I doubt they would have shared his votes for the ERA, reproductive freedom, labor rights, civil rights, or universal healthcare and a basic income. They might’ve shared his enthusiasm for military contractors and a bellicose foreign policy, but little else. But I don’t recall progressive coming into vogue until the progressive third party movement in Vermont, then the Clintons reclaiming it for themselves, and then netroots and the Dean wing trying to reclaim it in the early 2000s. But now it runs the gamut from Hillary to Bernie, which is a wide spectrum in my view.
But that is possible because the distinctions among marxism, communism, and socialism are vague to Americans. Liberals aren’t necessarily marxist or communist, but they are and have long been socialist.
…to flush out your point, rather than a five sentence post that suggests that everything is self-evident and if you can’t understand that, then we don’t have a grasp of American history. I’m very curious about your view as to who were “liberals” in American history and who were the “progressives” and what distinguishes them from the other.
See post.
But still unclear who you would label “liberal” compared to a Brandeis? You have presented a thesis that liberals and progressives are very different and I’m trying to get an understanding about your views on the differences.
Barry Goldwater and others made a conscious decision to take back the word “conservative” and make it some positive. They have been on the march ever since, and they’ve suffered a few defeats, but they never back away from that word. They argue over who is more conservative.
Perhaps you can anticipate my next point. I hate the label progressive, I think it’s had no meaning since the Progressive Party faded into history.
Liberal is larger than who you root for. At its core, it is the belief that government should help people.
And, progressive want to make sure Government helps people in the most open, transparent way possible.
I have always thought of myself as an old fashioned lunch bucket liberal… Barbara Mukuski, Tip ONeill, Daniel Monahan and Barney Frank off the top of my head.
I loved the Atlantic story by that renegade Republican David Frum called The Transparency Trap. Read it please.
http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/09/the-transparency-trap/375074/
And I am enough of a young fogey to want that kind of ‘retro’ liberal to come back into vogue.
Babs is still kicking ass and is a great Senator! And those other three are heroes of mine, particularly Tip since we both got our donuts at Vernas, our hair cut by Frank the barber, ate at Franks Steakhouse, and got our first communion at St Johns. He epitomized the best of North Cambridge, and blue collar liberalism at it’s core. Might be the Democrat I identify myself with most. The Reagan Revolution could have been twice as bad were it not for his leadership, I make it a point to reread his memoir every time I came home.
judy-meredith is right: Frum’s article is quite worth reading.
… however, what you expanded into, while interesting and informative, doesn’t address your initial, rather forceful, contention that liberals cannot be progressives and progressives cannot be liberals.
As a Christian I’m sometimes, often angrily, confronted with Fred Phelps as the archetype of Christianity… to which my response has always been “I don’t believe in that god either. Same as you” The reactions to that have ranged from “then you’re not a Christian” (in a refusal to question their own archetypes) all the way to ‘wait… what?” I have seen other people reject “religion” and move to “spirituality”… in a pretty tidy parallel to the ‘liberal’ not ‘progressive’ argument… because they don’t like other peoples definition of ‘religion’. Personally, I think that displays a lack of confidence in their own thinking and an over-dependence on the labels others have the bad graces to try to co-opt…
or as George & Ira Gershwin wrote : ‘you say tomato and I say tomaytoe’. But rather than get into a long philosophical discussion about the subtle nuances between the two I’d like to share some of my favorite quotes on the subject :
“There are causes worth fighting for even if you know you will lose.” JIMMY STEWART MR.SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON
“The question should be, is it worth trying for, not can it be done.” ALLARD LOWENSTEIN
To JFK and his homage to liberalism’s mission statement which I believe in with every fiber of my soul: “If by a ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people–their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties–someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what the mean by a ‘Liberal’, then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’ PRESIDENT JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY
Good night and Good luck to all you Liberals/Progressives, Fred Rich LaRiccia
It sums up our philosophy so succinctly and worked in 1960 as much as it does today. I always post that whenever righty friends in Facebook try to reclaim Jack for themselves.
I’m not one so I can’t speak with authority how progressives should self-define. But not being one I think I can bring some real-world perspective to where progressives fit, or where they think they fit, on America’s political spectrum.
I’m only trying to be helpful because progressives, especially those here at the cloistered BMG, suffer from “blue shift”, the phenomenon where they feel they occupy the center of the political spectrum. It a political Doppler effect. You’re moving left, so everything else turns red.
KBusch outlined all this for me on BMG in July of 2009, and I keep a screen shot of his political spectrum analysis handy, just to remind myself that you all really believe you sit in the middle of a 1-to10 scale. “We’re at 6.0. Slightly right of center.” That’s his view, and he might not speak for the rest of BMG. (If there’s a way to post a jpeg in my comment, somehow tell me how and I’ll gladly share it.)
Maybe this is a MA thing, but even my liberal/Democrat friends and family constantly ask me “what’s up with you people in Massachusetts?” Of course, you would instinctively label them “wingnuts” or fascist, if only to maintain your centrist self-image.
Despite your own perception, progressives are not some middle-of-the-road, “liberal with a good uppercut.” You’re pretty far to the left of center, certainly to the left of contemporary liberalism. You’re the far left wing of the Democrat Party, far enough left to consider the authoritarian state as a force for good, and believing good intentions justify almost any government action, as long as those actions are taken by progressives. To a great extent, this is a remarkably illiberal belief.
But if that’s true, if progressive represent the center, if they’re indeed a 6.0, then Elizabeth Warren is our next President.
Of course, this is all simply my perspective. But I’ve been soaking in a progressive cauldron for 30 years so it’s not like some mystery.
Many people here proudly identify as “lefties”.
My ideals are solidly on the left, but I am pragmatic enough to know most policy gets made in the center. But what the ‘center’ occupies today is far to the right of where it was, even a generation ago, and particularly on economic questions. Social progress has been demonstrable in the other direction, a proud liberal like Ed Muskie couldn’t get away with saying ‘I hate having to shake the hands of some goddamned soddamites” (in reference to meeting with gay rights groups in 72’) in today’s universe.
I am proud midcentury liberal, a bit more dovish than they were on defense, and a bit more libertarian than they were on social policy. But otherwise, the same values my grandpa voted for.
The country has been moving right, even conservative analysts demonstrate that this Congress is one of the most conservative in history. Read the obit of Jim Jefford’s I linked to on another thread-there was a time when many Republicans occupied the center. Those days are over. There is far more ideological diversity within the Democratic party. Our tent is big enough for Warren or Manchin. The GOPs tent isn’t big enough for anyone to the ‘left’ of Rand Paul. Someone who opposes the Civil Rights Act and Social Security as a few examples.
Those Texas oil millionaires run the party, their numbers are no longer negligible in fact, they dominate the GOP. Eisenhower and Nixon are to the left of today’s Democrats, least of all, today’s Republicans.
I don’t recall that comment. I’m kind of flattered.
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2009/07/southern-strategy-eating-gop-alive/#comment-189333
The original context was your characterization of BMG as a “far-left moonbat blog”. This was over just how radical Sottomayer would be. In a sense, my comment was counter-snark whereby I got to characterize the entire Republican as radicals among radicals — which was sort of fun. Well, at least, we aren’t fundi Greens.
The center-right parties in Europe all support the modern welfare state. Our GOP does not. This has shifted the American political spectrum so far to the right that British Tories and European Christian Democrats would all be Democrats here.
I don’t think it’s very productive to think of political ideologies purely in terms of the particular styles of how activists move, and then argue that “progressivism” has more street cred in getting stuff done.
To draw the distinction in the obvious linguistic way, liberals believe in liberty and progressives believe in progress. Liberalism has been committed since the days of John Locke on in the idea that society needs to be organized in such a way that respect people’s ability to live their lives how they want. But “modern liberals” interpret this more broadly than classical liberals and libertarians do, and argue that this includes people having the substantive freedom to be able to do particular things, and have access to things like health care, education, and a decent standard of living. And conversely, progressivism is about the idea that society progresses, and that by studying what works, we make a more effective society.
But then most progressives and most (modern) liberals are progressives. In principle you can have one without the other: a “regressive liberal” might believe that individual freedom is all well and good but be skeptical of government’s ability to accomplish it, and a “illiberal progressive” might believe that government should try to accomplish goals actively contrary to individual happiness. Classical liberals often fell in the first category, and some of the historical progressives fell in the second category when they had their “flaws and contradictions” acting up. But by and large, these days “liberals” and “progressives” tend to want both. Using the power of government to allow people to live lives how they want to live. That’s liberal progressivism.
I would add that Mill embraced social democracy later in his life and throughout his brief parliamentary career, precisely because he recognized that increasing freedom also meant a freedom from fear and a freedom of want in addition to the freedom of speech and religion he outlines in ‘On Liberty’.